On the Board rests the responsibility of determining the policy-related, administrative, cognitive, and intellectual direction the State's higher educational system takes.
Its brasstacks functions fall into three categories:

* ACADEMIC (Preparing the curricula & syllabi for secondary schools, recommending Text Books for Government approval, registering new Secondary Schools, maintaining a periodically updated register of secondary schools of the State, conducting inspection & supervision of secondary schools in the State, prescribing school timings, vacations, internal examinations & promotion rules, holidays, etc., advising the State Government on academic matters).

EXAMINATIONS (Conducting Main and Supplementary public examinations every year in March and October, for SSC (Standard l0) and HSC (Standard 12). The SSC examination is conducted in 335 centres, for more than 7 lakh students. 101 subjects are covered, and question papers are set in six different languages -- Gujarati, Hindi, English, Marathi, Sindhi & Tamil. The HSC examination is conducted in 158 centres, for more than 2 lakh students. 168 subjects are covered, and question papers are set in three languages -- Gujarati, Hindi & English. The Board also holds a Talent Search for students of Std VIII & IX in five major subjects every year, for nearly 35,000 students).

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT (The R&D division of the Board takes up research projects, and publishes research papers. It conducts training courses for inspecting officers and teachers and other functionaries in of Secondary Education. It publishes a monthly magazine named 'Madhyamik Shikshan & Parikshan', containing articles on various issues related to Secondary Education. This magazine is circulated among all the Schools in the State free of cost. It also conducts Academic Panel inspections, to bring up the quality of schools identified as low-performing).